I ask for 30 years, what is real? And in 2-3-74 I got my answer as if the universe—well, as if my question traveled across the whole universe and came back to me in the form of experienced answers . . . and what I wind up with after 6½ years of studying those experienced answers is: a surd. A perturbation in the reality field—an irregularity, a departure from the normal—a tugging or pulling or bending. And that is all. Not even the thing, the perturbing body itself; only its effects on “the reality field.” Something out of the ordinary—like I say, a surd.
So what, then, do I know about the nature of reality? That an irregularity can show up in it that points to—something else. Only a sign.
Q: “Ti to on?”
A: Heidegger says, “Why is there something instead of nothing?” To which I ask, “Why does Heidegger think there is something instead of nothing?”
The tug is real and the “reality field” tugged on isn’t. So that which is genuinely real is pointed to by its effect on the “reality field” (which isn’t real) but what it is that is doing the tugging I have no idea.
[1:127] The perturbation in the reality field was not by me but by the Tao. Nonetheless I broke my own programming by a heroic act of will. Yes; our spatiotemporal aspects (what we take to be reality) are indeed our own prior thought formations coming back to us. Yes; anamnesis is recognizing them as such: which permits you to break their hold (programming) over you by (on your part) an act of (your) will. Doing something new—introducing one single new change—destroys their ossified nature and starts up real time, it causes a time perturbation, as if time were running backward; this may be due to one forcing the prior thought formations back into the past where they properly belong; it would seem to you, then, as if the future had broken in, moving retrograde in time. This “future breaking in” is: real time! Due to the destroying of the supremacy of the past (prior thought-formations as world). Once these prior thought-formations’ power over you. [ . . . ] You can see (?) (experience) the Tao: true reality as it is without the prior thought formations. You can see the tug by the Tao (matrix containing the eide) on reality-as-a-field.
[1:137]
[1:138] 4:30 A.M.: I was lying here thinking how Christ would show up in the alley and the weeds because that is where he is and things of daily life and world, and I asked myself, “Would he be additional substantial/material trace bits?” And I realized, “No, as a tug, a perturbation—the iron filings and magnetic field perturbation”—the eide are not material, not physical; so the only way they (he) would show up would be as a tug; and this would render the plural objects and processes as a field perturbed as a unitary whole—I visualized it so clearly. Since he is not real in the spatiotemporal sense, and yet he is here not there, in this world, immediately at hand; I understood it for a moment so clearly—and it was exactly what I saw in 3-74 that I called Valis. It is the only evidence we would have. [ . . . ] So I arrive at the conclusion to this exegesis and it is where I started: Valis is the cosmic Christ; but to understand this I had to reject all other possibilities one by one over a 6½ year period; and, most important of all, I had to study Plato’s metaphysics thoroughly and rejoin it to its other half: Christianity, the anamnesis of the Eucharist, arising out of Orphism, from which Plato’s metaphysics came.
[1:170] But most of alclass="underline" breath. The pattern in the iron filings: that it is breath to weeds: field to iron filings. It is the stirring in the weeds, the pattern (structure) as with Pythagoras. Field. Arrangement. It is not substantial; it is nothing (but a field). And the AI voice—very faintly, arranging my thoughts!
Absolutely it is a field, as in quantum mechanics. Not the iron filings, but the pattern.
I can visualize it very clearly—visualize Valis. Set-ground reversal. The not-is is Valis. The is is not.
It is normally a weak field, too weak to be detected. Only under exceptional circumstances does it intensify to cause a perceptible perturbation (3-74). Paradoxically, though it is weak it is irresistible. Why, this is the Tao! This is how the Tao works! (vide the Tao Te Ching). Weak and—everywhere (Ubik!).
[ . . . ]
It is weak and yet it cannot be resisted. This is the Tao. It works through what is small. I am small. It worked through (on) me. To affect modern history! Wu wei.75
[ . . . ]
If all reality (universe) is a (one) field, it (Tao) need set up a tiny perturbation at one space time, and ultimately the whole field will be affected, by inducing an enantiodromia of the whole field! Through a chain of mounting flip-flops! I was one such, in 3-74.
[ . . . ]
I finally understand. This is what is meant by “a perturbation in the reality field.” One tiny tug sets a sequence of mounting, growing changes in motion, ending in massive (total?) enantiodromia: victory. Over world. Since all reality is one field the effects of the initial perturbation end only when the final enantiodromia occurs, and all the “counters” flip over to their opposites.
This is what TMITHC is about, and deliberately so. But: the real secret is:
Something new (although tiny, bordering on ex nihilo, on nothing, yet something) is introduced into an otherwise closed system. My example? My act vis-à-vis the Xerox missive. As a result the entire closed system is affected throughout.
[1:175] The fact that I wound up with Valis as a surd when I finished my first “complete” or “successful” overview shows how scrupulous I was. It would have to be left over. Deity can’t be fitted into a theoretical system; it is irreducible and stands alone. But at least that way I could focus on it as isolated—which paved the way for my total overview in which this surd was included but only as “the absolute,” leading finally to my ferociously close scrutiny of it in total isolation (from my own mind and from the reality field as well).
I realized that it came into existence literally out of nothing, was pure arrangement and not the things arranged (acted upon). I visualized (conceived of) it as a breath on the weeds of the alley—then connected it to the “heroic act that causes genuine newness” to enter the world; then, realizing that it is weak but irresistible, I saw it as the Tao and hence saw its relationship to the dialectic and mounting chains of events culminating in macroenantiodromia: the purpose of it “breathing” on the “weeds in the alley.” Which shows total wisdom on its part!
[1:185] Well, my perception of 3-74 is that I encountered something outside of me; and my recent theory is that it came into existence out of nothing—at least in terms of our reality field.
[1:208] Yes, something can be irreal and yet powerful; the lie is powerful; it thrusts itself at us like a reality, but I saw in 2-74 that it isn’t real. [ . . . ]